Patricia Guadalupe Columnist

Latin groups point out that for this new year the elect president Barack Obama has given to the community a big gift with the nomination of more Hispanics to importance positions that any other president in the history. There is the nomination of the governor Bill Richardson, of New Mexico, for Secretary of the Department of Commerce; that of senator Ken Salazar, of Colorado, for Secretary of the Department of the Interior, and Hilda Solís for Secretary of the Department of Work.

The groups are quite satisfied with these nominations, and many vacancies are still missing for filling out of the Office and in assistant director positions. Several of these Latin groups carried out a press conference to be grateful to the elect president who has paid so much attention to the community with these three importance appointments, but unfortunately they did not concentrate well on the history when they said that Solís is the first Hispanic person nominated to the position.

In fact, the first one was in 2001, when the president Bush nominated Linda Chávez. It is true that she withdrew his nomination when one ventilated that it had hired an undocumented person to be employed at his hearth, but in effect it was the first Hispanic one in being nominated. When it withdrew his name, the president asked Elaine Chao to take the position, and she happened to be the first person of Asian origin in heading the department. The paradox of having more Hispanics in the presidential Office and in other importance positions inside the administration Obama the fact is that it diminishes the Hispanics' quantity in the Congress.

Solís represents an area of the city of Los Angeles with overwhelming most of Latin Americans, and of course the person who her will happen in the Lower House will be Hispanic, but the bench of senator Salazar is another matter. Several have already indicated his interest to be postulated for the position (including Tom Tancredo, the projecting conferee of politics ultra conservative), and none – for the time being – is Hispanic. One speaks of replacing it with his brother, conferee John Salazar, but that obviously means that it would go out of the Lower House, and it is not sure that there a Hispanic person would replace it. Without the exit of Solís and Salazar (and perhaps others), the Hispanics are still little represented in the federal Congress: only they represent 5 per cent of the benches. And with the announcement of the retreat of senator Mel Martínez, of the Florida, only there would stay senator Robert Menéndez, of New Jersey, if it is that a Hispanic person does not happen to Martínez. It is an irony that the legislators want to change, and a desire that they have for the new year is to obtain a major recruiting of Hispanic candidates so that they do not have a part to be lost so that it gains other one.